The Yamaha AW1600 continues Yamaha's groundbreaking studio in a box concept, introduced with the popular AW16G and AW4416 digital audio workstations.
The AW1600 provides immediate access to inspiration and creativity. The AW1600 is fully backward-compatible with prior Yamaha workstations, and has everything you need to record your music anytime, anywhere in a compact, road-worthy design - keeping alive the tradition of reliable, portable and professional music production products.

Totally Reliable: The AW1600 has been engineered from the ground up to be the best multitrack recorder it can be. So it's always reliable - no crashes, and no OS updates.

Easily Portable: This complete studio package is ready to pick up and go anywhere you want to record.

Completely Professional: Mixing, routing and onboard effects are based on the industry-standard Yamaha 0 series digital consoles, so everything has the familiar feel and Yamaha quality.

What sets the AW1600 apart from other stand-alone units is new USB 2.0 capabilities, which gives you the flexibility of dragging and dropping files directly into your computer, making specific tasks such as podcast production and file sharing easier.

The AW1600 has been created for the home studio musician, adding many features to the award-winning AW16G while maintaining the same affordability. New features include eight combo inputs (all with Phantom power), USB 2.0 drag-and-drop capabilities for moving files onto your computer, 24-bit recording and a new Pitch Fix algorithm for correcting the pitch of vocal tracks. The 16-track design, Quick Loop Sample function, Hi-Z connection, Guitar and Mastering effects and sample pads have the familiar operation and user-friendly interface from the AW16G, while a powerful new SH3 CPU processor, generous 40 GB hard drive and unrestricted song limit provide endless possibilities for song creation and mix building.

Totally Redesigned Operation
The AW1600 is designed to be operated directly by the musician (guitarist, vocalist, drummer etc.). With a minimum number of steps, you can assign input signals to tracks, switch the monitor signal, and record with effects, EQ, and dynamics processing applied.

Four-band EQ and Dynamics Processors on Each Channel
Four-band full-parametric EQ and dynamics processing is provided on virtually every channel. You can recall the desired preset from the library, and use the panel knobs
and keys to quickly adjust the settings.

Two High-quality Multi-effect Units are Built-in
The two built-in effect units deliver a wide variety of effects including spatial-type effects such as reverb and delay, modulation type effects such as chorus and flanger, and guitar-type effects such as distortion and amp simulation.

These effects can be used either via send/return, or
inserted into a desired channel.

Recorder Section

8-track Simultaneous Recording & 16-track
Simultaneous Playback (16-bit songs)
You can record multiple tracks of instruments one by one,
or set up multiple mics to record a drum set or a live performance by an entire band. A stereo track for direct mixdown of all 16 tracks is also provided, letting you manage the multi-track audio and the two-track mix as a single package of data.

For the multi-tracks as well as the stereo track, you can use eight virtual tracks for each track. When recording parts or during mixdown, you can switch virtual tracks to
record multiple takes, and select the best take later.
The bit depth (number of quantization bits) of the audio data recorded on each track can be set to 16 or 24 bits for each individual song. 16-bit songs allow simultaneous recording of up to 8 tracks, and simultaneous playback of up to 16 tracks. A maximum of eight 24-bit song tracks can be recorded or played simultaneously.

Versatile Editing Functionality
Audio data recorded on a track can be copied, moved, or edited using a variety of commands. You can make detailed edits, or even make radical changes to the structure
of the song by using the same riff repeatedly or
increasing the number of choruses.

Time Compression lets you compress or expand the
time axis of the audio data in a range of 50%–200%. Pitch Change lets you modify the pitch in a range of one octave upward or downward. You can use the Undo function
to reverse the results of as many as the last fifteen
editing operations.

A Variety of Locate Methods, and Auto Punch-in/out
Seven locate points (start/end, relative zero, A/B, in/out)
and 99 markers can be assigned at any desired point in the song, for quick access via Locate operations. Auto punch in/
out and A-B repeat playback functions are also provided. The AW1600 also has a metronome that follows the tempo map.

Sound Clip Function
The Sound Clip function lets you record and play back an
input signal without affecting the recorder tracks. You can
use this as a sketch for your ideas for a song or arrangement.

Vocal Editing with Pitch Fix
A Pitch Fix function is provided to allow precise adjustment of the pitch of a vocal track as well as the generation of chorus parts from a main vocal line. This feature can also be used to change the character of a vocal sound.

Quick Loop Sampler Section

The AW1600 has a built-in pad-type sampler. You can assign sixteen stereo waveforms to the four pads with sample banks. Audio tracks from the hard disk, or WAV files from a CD-ROM disc or computer can be loaded. The timing at which each pad is pressed can be recorded on a dedicated pad track, and edited later. Drum phrases from the sample library can be assigned to pads, and you can then record pad operations to use this function as a simple rhythm machine.

The maximum polyphony is four stereo notes, and the maximum playback time is a total of approximately 47 seconds (approximately 29 seconds in 24-bit songs) of stereo for the entire Quick Loop Sampler.

CD-RW Drive

A dedicated CD-RW drive is installed in the AW1600. You can produce an audio CD from the stereo tracks of the songs recorded on the hard disk. Markers assigned within a song can also be used as the track numbers of the CD. You can even use advanced techniques such as assigning more than one track number within a single song. The CD-RW drive can also be used to backup/restore songs, to play back audio CDs, and to load WAV data from a CD-ROM.

Connecting to a Computer

The AW1600 can be directly connected to a computer via the built-in USB interface. This allows WAV-format audio files to be copied between the AW1600 and computer for convenient management and processing in computerbased applications, and backup song files can be stored on the computer’s memory media.